22-10.250 Profilseminar: The Economics of Inequality and the Environment

Lehrende: Simon Disque; Prof. Dr. Moritz Alexander Drupp

Veranstaltungsart: Seminar

Anzeige im Stundenplan:

Semesterwochenstunden: 2

Credits: 6,0

Unterrichtssprache: Englisch

Min. | Max. Teilnehmerzahl: - | 20

Anmeldegruppe: Profilbildungsseminar

Kommentare/ Inhalte:
At the onset of the 21st century, (environmental) economics faces two mega-challenges: On the one hand, the loss of environmental goods and services is widespread and accelerating, while, on the other hand, concerns about economic inequalities become more prevalent in science, policy and society. These two challenges are inter-related: Economic inequality may influence environmental valuation and policy, while environmental policy may affect economic inequality in turn. The two challenges should therefore be studied and treated at the same time. The seminar addresses this interrelation by addressing a number of key issues. For example:

(1) How does distribution of income within a society affect the economic valuation of the environment and nature?

(2) What are individual and societal preferences for a more equal distribution of income and environmental quality?

(3) Who benefits from better environmental quality?

(4) Who bears the costs of environmental policy?

(5) How can environmental policies be designed to take distributional effects into account?
 

Vorgehen:

• 1. session: Introduction to the seminar, presentation of topics; assignment of topics; hints on writing term papers.
  
• In-between: Individual work on the topics and creation of an exposé (2-4 pages)
  
• 2. session: Peer-to-peer feedback on the exposés; Further details on the preparation of the term paper, seminar presentation and discussion of another paper
  
• In-between: Individual work on the term papers, feedback in office hours
  
• Submission of the term paper (as PDF and Word.docx via e-mail)
  
• In-between: Creation of the presentation and the discussion of another seminar paper, which will be sent to you by the lecturers.
  
• Block-session: Presentations and discussions 
  

Literatur:

• Bento, A.M. (2013). Equity impacts of environmental policy. Annual Review of Resource Economics 5(1), 181-196.
  
• Drupp, M.A., Kornek, U., Meya, J.N., & Sager, L. (2021). Inequality and the environment: The economics of a two-headed hydra. CESifo Working Paper No 9447. Available at: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp9447.pdf
  
• Fullerton, D. (2011). Six distributional effects of environmental policy. Risk Analysis, 31(6): 923-929.
  
• Piketty, T., & Saez, E. (2014). Inequality in the long run. Science, 344(6186), 838-843.
  

Zusätzliche Hinweise zu Prüfungen:
Your term paper as well as the combination of presentation and discussion (Ko-Referat) count equally towards your overall grade.